Carlisle: tank not pictured. Photograph: Peter Noyce LC/Alamy
LET'S KICK KICK IT OUT REFUSENIKS OUT OF FOOTBALL
If there's one comedy seam the Fiver likes mining less than a not-exactly-ripe-for-giggles 'race row', it's an even-less-ripe-for-giggles anti-racism row. And while former footballer and current Professional Footballers' Association chairman Clarke Carlisle has always struck this tea-timely email as one of the English game's good eggs, with the publication of his autobiography You Don't Know Me, But ... A Footballer's Life, he hasn't so much come out with all guns blazing as driven around various English football grounds in a massive tank and vaporised assorted occupants with a barrage of missiles from his giant, pointy smoothbore gun.
Comedian Reginald D Hunter, QPR midfielder Joey Barton and former Leeds United manager Kevin Blackwell are among those Carlisle lines up in his crosshairs but it is those high-profile players who boycotted last October's Kick It Out anti-racism T-shirt campaign with whom the thoughtful and outspoken former player, Countdown contestant and documentary maker reserves his highest velocity shells.
"It is one of the few bodies doing something positive about the issue but there are some who evidently feel it is not doing enough," writes Carlisle. "Hence, when the call came for players to demonstrate their support during an awareness week last October they refused." Among the notable refuseniks were Rio and Anton Ferdinand, Joleon Lescott, Jason Roberts and the entire Swansea and Wigan teams, most of whom Carlisle labels "sh1thouses" for not explaining their decision to pointedly ignore his campaign.
"They have made their 'statement' for all to see but how many are prepared to stand in front of the cameras and be counted," fumes Carlisle, whose attempts to recruit big name players for his Is Football Racist? documentary turned up nobody better known than Jermaine Jenas and a couple of team-mates from Northampton Town. "Jason apart, the Premier League 'big' players will happily throw in a grenade but do nothing when it explodes, nothing other than appear to hide behind their advisers."
Not usually one to shy away from a row, Rio Ferdinand has thus far maintained his silence on Twitter at least, as his inalienable right. The nearest he's come to referencing Carlisle's "sh1thouse" remark came in a tweet posted on Saturday, in which he warned his own toilet to brace itself for the inevitable and quite literal scatological fall-out from a huge dinner he enjoyed on Saturday. "What a meal that was....in the morning I'll enter the bathroom at the normal time.....be ready Armitage Shanks!" he wrote, conjuring up all sorts of images, few of them pleasant. Coincidentally, on the day before the publication of the extract of Carlisle's book in the Daily Mail, an interview with Ferdinand appeared in its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday. In the accompanying photograph, Ferdinand was unafraid to show his support for a genre of music that originated with black musicians in the American deep south, sporting as he did a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Jazz".
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"After watching Slovakia's 1-1 draw with Romania in a friendly, we got the ill-judged impression that we would win easily and perhaps we shouldn't have watched it at all" – scouting is overrated reckons Bosnia coach Safet Susic after his team's 1-0 defeat by the Slovakians.
FIVER LETTERS
"Re Paul Dring's query (Friday's Fiver letters) - 'I wonder if other Fiver readers or perhaps even the Fiver itself, have regular jokes they enjoy making that are significantly funnier in principle than they are in practice.' Is Paul a new subscriber by any chance?" – Martin Dunton (and 1,057 others)
"I used to play football for Blackburn College and our captain was a South African lad call Paul Bland. We used to call him elastic, or 'lastic for short. He did not care for it" – Marten Allen.
Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.
GET 40% OFF I AM THE SECRET FOOTBALLER NEW EDITION – EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR FIVER READERS
From today until 20 September, Fiver readers can get the paperback edition of I Am The Secret Footballer, complete with a new chapter on the 2012-13 season and an introduction written by the Secret Footballer's wife, for only £4.79, saving 40% on RRP. To order your book, visit the Guardian bookshop or call 0330 333 6856 and use promo code SFPB0513.
JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES
We keep trying to point out the utter futility of advertising an online dating service "for interesting people" in the Fiver to the naive folk who run Guardian Soulmates, but they weren't having any of it. So here you go – sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly romantics who would never dream of going out with you.
BITS AND BOBS
Carlisle (the club rather than the aforementioned Clarke) have sacked manager Greg Abbott following the club's poor start to the League One season.
England defender Kyle Walker will not face FA disciplinary action after he was pictured inhaling nitrous oxide from a balloon.
Wales manager Chris Coleman has confirmed that the world's most expensive bench-warming mind game, Gareth Bale, will not start their World Cup qualifier against Serbia.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
South American football strangeness, part one – Brazilian team masseur makes goalline clearance
South American football strangeness, part two – dog scores back-post header
STILL WANT MORE?
Rhodes? Where we're going we don't need Rhodes, says Gordon Strachan. That's a bit of a shame, says Ewan Murray
Luis Suárez, the Blue Sharks and a Mexican malaise feature in 10 things we learned from the weekend international action
And, featuring potash, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Saudi David Brent, it's this week's Football Weekly!
SIGN UP TO THE FIVER
Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up.
AD 1
No comments:
Post a Comment